Sorry Hipsters, but saying it's a "Post Hip Hop Metal Quadraphonic New Age Revival" band won't get me to listen to something that sounds like an elephant raping a cat!

/seriously though, I do have a personal rule that "Even if I don't like the band, if I like the song, than I like the song."//it has to be LISTENABLE though!///that rule will backfire on me one day if I find a boy band song I like!

Somacandra:jake_lex: I think this is very true of "avant-garde" music: I mean, the first time I heard some of Schoenberg's twelve-tone stuff, it just sounded like noise to me. Then I learned a little music theory, and at least I knew what it was trying to do.

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Okay...here is the most difficult stuff I've ever learned to appreciate (on an intellectual level only).

jaylectricity:John Buck 41: Seems like a silly question. This may be an apples/oranges angle (actually music/food) but if I eat something that doesn't taste good, why try it again? I know what I like/don't like. Same for a shiatty movie or poorly written book. Why watch/read it again?

There's a thing called "acquired taste" that shoots all kinds of holes in your theory. I didn't like spinach the first 50 times I tried it but now I think it's delicious.

You're right. The first 50 times I put my fingers under a rocking chair and rocked, it sucked. But now I think it feels great.

"1) everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal; 2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it; 3) anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are."

jake_lex:I think this is very true of "avant-garde" music: I mean, the first time I heard some of Schoenberg's twelve-tone stuff, it just sounded like noise to me. Then I learned a little music theory, and at least I knew what it was trying to do.

I'm a jazz musician and in the course of my education at it, I directly experienced what's described in the article as well as observed it in other people. Seems pretty obvious to me. The whole history of music runs like that, with increasingly rich harmonies becoming more 'acceptable' over time in classical and later jazz music. Back in the 1700s the tritone, now an interval used in almost every tune imaginable (it hangs out in 7th chords among other places) was called 'Satan in music'. Supposedly at one point a few composers who used it in holy music were excommunicated from the church.

WTF Indeed:Considering that the majority of Top 40 today is just sampled techno beats from the 90's with auto-tuned singers laid on top of the electronic noise, I doubt there is anything that resembles harmonies to enjoy much less complex harmonies.

I think we even see it today, just in a different facet of music. That 'electronic noise' you refer to is often in fact a more rich, dissonant individual timbre. That 'wub' bass sound you hear in dubstep which sounds like a single, buzzing, obnoxious tone is in fact a multitude of overtones/harmonics more complex than other timbres we're more accustomed to. It seems to me that since the 50s and Ike Turner we've seen a progression in timbre toward more complex overtones and harmonics, rather than a progression in harmony. It's interesting to think about, anyway.